The wings did their job! The stakes were high for me, so I was disappointed that I only made a tiny hop in the air. But it worked!

While I was getting bored with the bad weather, I tried the wings in the factory floor below my workplace earlier. And that tiny pre-test proved that I could go outdoors to try the real thing. Although the weather this week didn’t look good at all! Yesterday in the afternoon the sun returned for just a couple of hours. So I prepared the wings with my crew a.s.a.p. and jumped in the van to the testinglocation.

TV programme Tiswat of (dutch) regional tv station Omroep West filmed in my workplace in december. This is the result, a fun item i’d say! They aired it last tuesday (17th Jan).

To keep you updated, here are my latest videos on the construction of the wing. Half december things have been progressing steadily. Floor did a nice job filming that, so here the result.

In the first video you see how I had the aerdynamic ribs cut at a technical workplace. The ribs give the wing its shape. We have succesfully attached them to the flightpins. The second video gives you a nice look at the completions of the wing. The work is not quite done yet, the mechanics of the wing needs to be calibrated, balanced and finetuned.

But isn’t it just great the wings have come off the drawing table and now hang in my workplace? I am tired but so excited!

Some time ago I connected the acceleration sensors of the HTC and Wii remote (and check this blogpost too for explanation). The next step was to send this acceleration data to my electronic speed controllers and outrunner motors. Floor and me went testing the system yesterday, watch the result below. I’m very proud of this.

So check out the photogallery and the video below. Also decided to attach an earlier sketch of the system, although it’s kind of a wild sketch, I think this explains what I did and how it works.

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About the project

Right here, on this blog I share everything about my crazy plan to build my own wings. My goal? To fly with it! Something Leonardo DaVinci, my grandfather and I dreamed of for a long time. But this summer I decided to really start building it. This blog is the result of my experiences of the project. You'll find video's, pictures and text on the progress, my inspiration and all your comments and support.